


Boxed Confessions

by dixie_drifter



Series: A Little Slice of the Kingdom [9]
Category: Animal Kingdom (TV)
Genre: And The Boys Do Too, Because I Derserve It, Fix-It, Fluff, M/M, Post-Finale, like a lot of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-27 13:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20408242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dixie_drifter/pseuds/dixie_drifter
Summary: Because of course Deran finds Adrian.





	Boxed Confessions

**Author's Note:**

> A little fix it fic for @adrideran on Tumblr. Because she deserves it.

Deran turned away from the woman he was talking to at the sound of a loud crack and a cry of pain. Adrian’s low hiss of “Fuck!” under his breath was audible in the silence that had fallen.

“You good, ace?” he called back.

Adrian poked his head around the bedroom door frame. One arm was bent behind his head, rubbing at his skull.

“Yeah, I’m good. Just knocked a box off a shelf.”

“Maybe you should be more careful,” Ada chimed in with a smile. The playfulness of her tone was undercut by the worry in her eyes.

Adrian smiled back at her. “I’m fine, really. Besides, the moment you leave, he’ll be all over me checking for damage.”

“Well, in that case, consider me gone.” Ava turned her smile, that now reached her eyes, on Deran. “See you tonight, yeah?”

“Maybe.”

“You always say that, and yet, you always show up. Its almost like, despite your best efforts, you actually like our company.”

Deran snorted. “Don’t count on it. I’m just there for the good food and the free beer.”

Ava laughed, reaching out before he could stop her to ruffle his hair, cut short once again. The familiarity of the action tugging at Deran, reminding him of Craig and Pope. “You like us,” she sing songed, “you really like us.”

She ducked when he swiped half halfheartedly at her. Ava continued her taunt as she began backing through the door she had left, as usual, open behind her. She ignored Deran when he flipped her off, his aggravation just the icing on the cake for her. She turned once she passed the threshold so she wouldn’t stumble down the little drop off to the porch. She threw a parting wave over her shoulder to Adrian before jogging down the stairs and down the narrow path past the fence around their place. The late afternoon sky was a backdrop of pale colors behind her.

“Bye, Asa!”

Deran whip the door shut and turned to make his way to Adrian. “Why do we like her again?”

Adrian hissed in pain as he prodded the sore spot on the back of his head. “Because she’s got her own shady past so she knows not to poke at ours. And because she’s awesome.”

Deran rolled his eyes even as he reached for Adrian. “Sure, _Asa, _whatever you say._” _He pulled Adrian’s hand away from his head and let his own fingers brush the area, light as a feather.

“What fell on you?” he asked, letting his eyes flick over the room behind Adrian, assessing the mess of papers on the floor among blankets and clothes that should probably find their way to a drawer sometime.

Adrian waved in the direction the papers, and Deran saw the small wooden chest that lay open beside them.

“It was sitting on one of the blankets, but I couldn’t see it since it was toward the back, so--”

“So when you yanked on the blankets everything else came raining down?”

“Yeah.”

Deran met Adrian’s eyes. He waved his hand in slowly in front of Adrian’s face, wiggling all five fingers. “How many fingers and I holding up?”

“Four.”

“What?” Deran asked, alarmed. He narrowed his eyes when he caught Adrian’s smirk.

“And one thumb.”

Deran brought boths hands up to cup Adrian’s jaw, sliding fingers into his soft hair, stroking his thumbs firmly across Adrian’s sharp cheekbones.

“You’re not funny.”

“I’m a little funny.”

Adrian grinned, the pain already fading, when Deran scoffed, poked Adrian’s nose, and moved by him to the mess on their bedroom floor.

“What is this stuff?”

The papers that had spilled from the chest when it had cracked open upon hitting the hard floor were mostly piled in one spot. There were a few that had been carried further by the breeze from the open window, but Deran paid no attention to them. Notebook paper, napkins, receipts, old book pages, there were so many different kinds of paper all with Adrian’s familiar slanted scrawl across them. Some held only a few words, some were covered front and back, some only held Deran’s name and a date.

“Adrian?”

Deran looked up at Adrian to find him standing with his hands shoved in his pockets, he wore a sheepish expression, biting his lip in a nervous gesture he’d had since they were kids.

“_Adrian_.”

Adrian sighed. “Its nothing, really, just proof of how pathetic I was without you.”

He shook his head when Deran opened his mouth to speak. “Its old news Deran, we cleared the air when you came looking for me four months ago. All the yelling and crying pretty much covered every subject on those.”

Deran looked down at the papers in his hands when Adrian waved a dismissive hand. He could see bits of words from corners and edges sticking out from the haphazardly way they were gripped in his hand.

_ \--I never knew what it was like to really miss you because you were never really out of my reach before-- _

_ \--abandoned-- _

_ \--my choice to leave so your nightmares would never-- _

_ \--think I hate-- _

_ \--I wish I could mean it, that awful thing I said to you that night. But I can’t. How could the one person who, from the beginning, accepted every piece of me and never tried to change me ever be anything but the-- _

_ \--miss you-- _

_ \--no one ever frustrated me or pissed me off the way you-- _

_ \--you left me alone-- _

_ \--love-- _

_ \--love-- _

_ \--love-- _

Deran sucked in a breath and stood. He dropped the letters in his hand back to the floor, and stepped toward Adrian, who had walked over and was leaning his shoulder on the wall, waiting.

Always waiting for Deran.

“First off, there’s nothing pathetic about you. Except your choice of football team, because, well, your loyalty will never be repaid with a Super Bowl in the foreseeable future.”

“Oh, fuck you. Like the Jets are gonna see one anytime--”

“Adrian, look at what  _ you _ did,” Deran said, knowing Adrian was hoping to use that to change the subject and not letting him.

Deran had crowded into Adrian’s space, fully pressing Adrian back into wall. He had grabbed Adrian’s waist to keep him still, but now reached up to frame his face. One hand slid back to grip his neck, and the other down to his jaw to raise Adrian’s face so he would look Deran in the eyes. Adrian, the stubborn ass, clenched his jaw, already preparing to counter whatever Deran said with his own argument. 

“When I showed up four months ago, I found you basically running that little shop on the beach, teaching proper surfing techniques. And this place? According to Ava, this place was falling down when you bought it off that desperate woman. And I know you gave her more than it was worth, because she needed it, and that’s who you are.”

Adrian licked his lips and lowered his eyes. He gripped Deran’s waist with both hands a little harder than necessary, like Deran would disappear if he gave him any slack. “I made do, Deran,” he murmured, meeting Deran’s eyes again so Deran could see the truth in Adrian’s.  Communication learned by trail and error.  “I wasn’t really living. I was numb. I knew this time wouldn’t be like the other times we pushed each other away for whatever stupid reason. I was… surviving. But--”

“But?”

Adrian shook his head.

“Hey, just tell me.” Deran let his hands trail down Adrian’s shoulders, his biceps, before wrapping them around his forearms. He pulled, closing the distance between them, resting his forehead against Adrian’s, unable to stop his sigh of relief or the way his body relaxed when Adrian in turn relaxed against him.

“But its you, Deran. Its always been you. There’s always going to be something inside me, however small and lost, that will never lose hope, that will never give up on you.”

He pulled away from Deran and walked a few feet away, spreading his arms as if gesturing to the house in whole.

“I wanted to do for you what you did for me. I wanted to make this place somewhere we could call home. And considering I had no idea, no way of knowing, that we would ever have that again, I think its pretty safe to call moving an entire wall so you could have a decent kitchen pretty pathetic.”

“Really? A whole wall?”

“You’re pretty bitchy about your kitchen space, D”

Adrian had sat down on the bed, elbows on knees, and was looking at Deran with an amused smile curling his mouth.  Deran moved toward him without thinking. He sat facing Adrian, one leg bent under him.

“You did all that, hoping I would come after you, and when I did, you wouldn’t even let me inside.” There was humor in his voice that made Adrian roll his eyes and scoff.  


“I let you inside.”

Deran shoved him, and Adrian went over,  almost to his side with a snort, before popping back up like a Weeble. “To eat and shower, but you made me sleep outside on the porch for a month.”

“It was for your own protection.”

“What if something had drug me off in the middle of the night?” 

“Its a screened in porch, Deran, with a locked door. If something came to take you, it’d be of the human variety, and my money’s on you in that fight.”

Deran preened a bit at that. He started to agree, before he realized he’d  let something in the conversation  pass him over . He grabbed Adrian’s arm to pull him back down  when Adrian had started to lift off the bed to stand. 

“What do you mean it was for my protection?”

Adrian raised a brow. “Deran, I love you. When I saw you on the beach that day I was simultaneously the happiest I had ever been and the most pissed. I didn’t want you anywhere near me, and I wanted you so close neither of us would know where the other began. Of course I would bring you here. But I wasn’t a hundred percent certain I wouldn’t smother you in your sleep if I let you share the bed.”

“Harsh, but I get it.”

Adrian ignored Deran’s muttering. “So I figured it was best if I didn’t put my self in a position to be faced with temptation.”

Deran sat there, turning into Adrian’s hand like a cat when the lifted it to Deran’s cheek. He traced the veins on the back of Adrian’s hand in silence,  pressing his face into Adrian’s hair when he laid his head on Deran’s shoulder. 

“You know, at least you knew what you were doing, aware of each step you were taking in a new life and new surroundings. I was lost in a daze, the weight of my stupid decision around my neck, choking me. Smurf beat it into us, that blood is all you have. I know that’s bullshit, always really have because more than anyone you were at my back my whole life, but its like muscle memory.

“I didn’t realize it until Pope pointed it out, that every decision I made since the moment I pulled myself of that dock, when I let you walk away because of that voice in my head, was just a step I had to take to get back to you.”

Adrian kept quiet as Deran spoke. He knew what Deran done in those nine months he had remained in Oceanside. Selling the house, buying the building the bar was in, bringing in an old contact who would be available for back up if his brothers needed her, and to act as a fence. Supporting Craig as a father, and Pope’s partnership with J, advising them both when they came to him for a second opinion. He kept himself out of any leaderships roles or tie breaking situations, anything that would make his presence in the future necessary. Deran had told him it had surprised him, seeing how well they functioned without him and with the addition of Ronnie. How it had made him feel relieved instead of hurt or jealous. 

He’d tried to sign the bar over to Pope, sealing his leave from the only place he’d ever really known, but Pope had refused. He had agreed to run the bar, exactly as Deran did, but he wouldn’t remove Deran’s name from it. Deran had made it into what it was, and even if Deran never came back, his mark on Oceanside would remain his.

Even subconsciously Deran chose him. As angry and hurt as Adrian had been, the part of him that had witnessed Smurf’s emotional abuse over the years was the part that acted as his rational side when Deran had made himself a fixture on Padang Padang Beach where Adrian worked. For the rest of their lives, he would never regret meeting Deran halfway. A life together in the Bali Province, even away from everyone they knew and loved was livable as long as they had each other.

Adrian moved quickly, rocking into Deran, pushing him back into the bed, smothering Deran’s startled yelp with a kiss.  It was a deep, languid kiss, no reason to hurry.

Deran took advantage of the way their legs were tangled to flip them, settling over Adrian, chest to chest.

“Don’t start something you can’t finish, Dolan. I believe you signed  us  up for this shindig tonight, you wouldn’t want to offend our hosts by being late would you.”

Adrian’s answer was lost in a moan when Deran scraped his teeth down Adrian’s pulse. When Deran lifted himself off Adrian to position himself for better leverage, Adrian used his bigger size to force Deran to his back,  again,  pinned in place by Adrian’s strong thighs. 

Adrian grinned down at Deran,  jerking the bottom a Deran’s t-shirt up, exposing his tan abdomen. “I’m sure they’d understand.”

He punctuated this statement by ridding Deran of his shirt. He slid his hands up Deran’s abs, scraping his thumb nails across his nipples, pressing the blunt edge of them into the nipple  on both sides  when Deran tried to stop himself from moaning. He leaned down to bite at one, earning that moan, before leaning forward and bracing his hands on either side of Deran’s head.  His eyes fluttered in pleasure when Deran’s hand 

“Let’s just agree that neither of us is pathetic. Because while we are both capable of surviving without each other, neither of us want to live a life that doesn’t have the other in it. Sound good to you?”

“A life with you?” Deran grinned,  his hand slipping inside Adrian’s board shorts. “I’ll take it. You gonna make me sign something or are you gonna take your clothes off?”

Really, though, what kind of question was that.

Later, when they showed up late for the bbq, to the good natured teasing from their new friends, they both carried a faint scent of smoke under soap, having burned Adrian’s boxed confessions. They were completely at ease with the fact that they were well and truly in it this time, for life. 


End file.
